Nissan announced that it will offer autonomous vehicles that will have broad availability and an affordable price by 2020.

Nissan's plan is to deliver several vehicle models with its Autonomous Drive technology by the end of this decade, and Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn will push hard to make sure that goal is met.

“In 2007 I pledged that – by 2010 – Nissan would mass market a zero-emission vehicle,” Ghosn said. “Today, the Nissan LEAF is the best-selling electric vehicle in history. Now I am committing to be ready to introduce a new ground-breaking technology, Autonomous Drive, by 2020, and we are on track to realize it.”

Nissan is hoping for "availability across the model range within two vehicle generations."

Nissan is already working hard toward its goal. The automaker has been working with several colleges such as MIT, UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, Oxford, the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Virginia Tech, and almost every major university in Japan to develop the autonomous technology.

In addition, Nissan is working on an autonomous vehicle testing facility in Japan, which should be completed next year.

Back in February, Nissan announced its Silicon Valley research center for autonomous vehicles. The new facility is called the Nissan Research Center Silicon Valley (NRC-SV), and it will use partnerships with educational institutions and companies to work on projects for new vehicle technologies.

Nissan's autonomous vehicle technology will be based off of its current Safety Shield tech, which monitors a 360-degree view around a vehicle for risks and offers warnings to the driver. It will even respond to the situation if necessary.

We may have to wait until 2020 for Nissan's autonomous vehicles, but in the meantime, the automaker is making strides in the electric vehicle industry. For instance, it announced that it will offer a new battery design for the all-electric Leaf in April 2014 if current testing goes well. The new design aims to help the Leaf's battery from depleting under severe weather conditions (mainly heat).

Nissan has seen a surge in Leaf sales this year, and updating its battery design can only help its cause. In July, it was reported that Nissan is now selling approximately 2,000 Leaf electric vehicles each month (about four times the volume it was selling about a year ago). To meet this new demand, Nissan is slowly ramping up production of the Leaf at its manufacturing facility in Tennessee.

For the ivory tower politicians who do live in such places as NYC, Chi, SF, etc. public transportation is all the rage except when they are driven around in caravans of SUVs.

A local politician chastised a gardener struggling to get by for his "dirty emission" diesel truck that gets about 18mpg.She said he'd be more responsible if he got a hybrid.He answered something like "A hybrid truck costs $30,000 to $50,000 and gets 2 miles per gallon more than mine on a good day. I would have to drive over a million miles to make up the difference."

Of course politicians would rather see him drag his 300-400 pounds of equipment on and off public buses than carry them in his truck.

Back on subject, I would be OK with autonomous vehicles if all vehicles were autonomous. It's not that I don't trust the machines themselves but that I can spot a nutty driver from 10 cars ahead or behind and do my best to get out of the way. I can see a driver on a cell phone prepping a lane change into my lane and get out of the way. I don't quite trust a computer to do those kinds of things. On local streets, I would rather have the ability to stop when I see a kid throw a ball into the street or if turning onto a one-way street, a bicyclist riding against traffic on the other side of parked cars.Still, the concept is nifty. If I were to doze off I wouldn't mind a car that could pull over and switch on hazard lights for me.